Shamar Shelton of St George's. - File
ST GEORGE'S College and Excelsior High took the Manning Cup and Walker Cup knockout titles for Corporate Area schoolboys with some amount of style in Saturday's finals at the National Stadium.
Both toppled schools that entered the finals as defending champions, St George's dethroning Jamaica College by a 2-0 margin and Excelsior unseating Calabar in emphatic fashion, 5-1.
Significantly, both winners played contrastingly, but to their strengths - St George's by maximising usage of their key players with a heavy passing feed and Excelsior by packing the defence and hitting long passes for their speedy forwards to run at defence.
Many teams are not good at getting their weapons to function effectively, especially in big-occasion matches, so hats off to coaches Neville 'Bertis' Bell of St George's and Excelsior's Leebert Halliman, as well as the players, for executing plans to perfection for marvellous wins.
16-year drought
The Light Blues from North Street broke a 16-year drought to lift and 19th Manning title whereas Mountain View Avenue-based Excelsior, dubbed 'Aggi' off their school motto - Age Animo, joined St George's at the top of the hill of Walker Cup titles after notching their seventh.
St George's forwards Shamar Shelton, who scored the opening goal, and, though he did not add to his season-high tally, Kemal Malcolm, were the difference between the teams. They made a hell of a difference, tormenting JC the entire afternoon with raw skill.
The pacy Malcolm was especially busy and more effective at dribbling and a rebound from his scorching free kick set up midfielder Dan Evans to score the second goal.
Not to be outdone, JC had much possession and, even without their two top players, coordinated well as a team with Ashani Walker a standout. But, they never had any luck as they struck the woodwork three times, two of which were actually bread-and-butter chances at goalmouth.
Wide open chances were made quite frequently in the opening game with a deceptive result, as Calabar were not outclassed in the manner suggested by the 5-1 scoreline.
In fact, they had the lion's share of possession and pinned Excelsior into their defensive third for the first 25 minutes of the second half.
However, they were awfully poor defensively, especially the centre halves, and were lucky not to have been trailing by the margin which they ended up losing, at even the end of the first half, as Excelsior were on a goal-missing spree.
Technical work
Such defensive frailties are not common only at schoolboy level, but even at an advanced stage, which suggests that not enough technical work is being done to improve weaknesses of players in a manner that they become capable to handle and pass the football well enough, with either foot, head or other parts of the body.
Many of the players, who are playing in the Premier League, Super Leagues or other division one competitions across the island, continue to be affected by these problems, which makes you wonder what is taking place at the training grounds.
As they say in football, practice makes permanent, so you figure if one's doing the basic technique workouts constantly, you should be good enough to be able to contribute in making the game the way the team and FIFA wants it - beautiful for spectators.
Oftentimes, the deficiencies of decent techniques result in defenders 10-20 yards clear, with teammates in close proximity, just pounding the ball upfield because they don't have the confidence to even control the ball.
Another concern, which relates not to coaches but the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA), has to do with the scheduling of the knockout competitions and the decisive semi-finals and finals, which saw two Clarendon schools - Lennon High and Spaldings High, playing a semi-final in another parish, St Elizabeth, when there is a top-level venue at Brancourt in Clarendon.
The Walker Cup and Ben Francis knockout competitions, played at the end of the respective Manning and daCosta Cup preliminaries, and before the start of the quarter-final knockout phase, present a distinct disadvantage to the chances of the competitors also winning the more prestigious Manning and daCosta Cup titles by way of fatigue and cards that might be incurred during the additional matches (three for the finalists) squeezed into a week.
Halliman added his voice to that obvious observation recently, which could be corrected by completing the leagues first, before moving on to the knockout championships, as was the case in years gone by.
This would also eliminate the unfair issue relating to cards accumulated in the knockout competitions, which lead to suspension from the leagues. This has affected several teams at the back-end of the campaign, including finalists JC who had to do without top two players.
The playfield must be level and the governors need to set the trend.
